From the course: Documentary Photo Techniques with Photoshop and After Effects

Batch processing with the Image Processor script

From the course: Documentary Photo Techniques with Photoshop and After Effects

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Batch processing with the Image Processor script

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- If you're working on a documentary, you may have lots of files to work with. I often want to get those files quickly prepped. Now, I still like to go back and do this all by hand for the final images, but initially, at the start of the project, I may just want to get everything into a consistent format, or apply some bulk changes. This can be useful to quickly get the images into a more friendly-to-edit format, or to get them a little bit more consistent. You can then go back later and tweak the images by hand, to really bring them to life, but let me show you how to save some time. In Bridge, navigate to a bunch of images that you want to process. You can then select all of those images, and choose Tools, Photoshop, Image Processor. Here, you can make some important changes. For example, you can decide which images to open. In this case, it's taking them from Bridge. You can also decide to open up the first image, if it's a RAW file, to apply any adjustments. Next, tell it where it's going to go. Save in the same location, or make a new folder. Well, let's select a new folder here, and we'll make a new folder here in the Project folder, and we'll call this Batch, and I'll click open. Now, you can choose the format. Now, I recommend not saving as a JPEG. Many folks want to avoid JPEG, because it's going to reduce compression, and it could cause problems when editing video. JPEG compression is sometimes incompatible with video codecs, and it also leads to an additional softening of the image. I recommend going to a TIFF file, and you can choose to apply or not use the LZW compression. Additionally, you can choose to Resize to Fit. This will allow you to put another target size in. We can say that we want these to fit in 2000 pixels by 2000 pixels. If needed, you can also run an action. This will allow you to choose from any of the actions that you have loaded, as well as if you want to apply an effect. I could use the Sepia Toning option here. If you don't want to use actions, just turn that off. You will find more about actions available in the online library. You can also assign copyright info if needed. When you're ready, take a look at it once more, from top to bottom. I'm going to take these images that I selected in Bridge, I'm going to save them to a new folder. I'm going to convert to TIFF files and resize them. And, I chose to skip, but I could've applied a Photoshop action. When ready, I'll click the Run button, and you'll see that each image quickly opens, and is sized and saved to the target folder. Now, let's go back to Bridge, and we'll explore. I see the Batch folder here, there are my TIFFs, and if I select, I see that all of these images are sized, so that they're either 2000 pixels across, or 2000 pixels tall. This made it simple to get them to a larger size, and make them consistent for use in my story. One benefit to this consistent sizing is that it'll make it easier for your system to process. You also can work with presets for things like pans and scans, and know that the files aren't going to bog down your editing platform. Now, you may have to play with the size of the resolution, and ultimately, I'll go back and tweak the final files by hand, if I'm trying to get the highest quality. But, this batch processing option, with the image processing script, is very useful. It lets you choose a set of pictures, change the file format to something that's more edit-friendly, like TIFF, apply an action, if needed, for things like color correction or toning, and even a resize command. And what's great, is that your original files can remain untouched if you choose to copy these files to a new location.

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